This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from the prior Japanese Patent Application No. 2000-376401, filed Dec. 11, 2000, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention relates to a recording method/apparatus and reproduction method/apparatus for recording/reproducing music contents distributed from an EMD (Electronic Music Distribution) system on/from an information storage medium.
The DVD video recording (DVD-VR) standards issued by the DVD Forum in September of 1999 are application standards for DVD recording using DVD-RAM (rewritable) discs or DVD-RW (re-recordable) discs that allow recording/reproduction. As the application standards for DVD recording, DVD audio recording (DVD-AR) standards are about to hatch in addition to the DVD-VR standards.
In DVD-VR standards, one audio coding of linear PCM, DOLBY DIGITAL (AC-3), and MPEG is recorded on a disc, and a reproduction apparatus equips a decoder for the audio coding to assure compatibility among reproduction apparatuses. Likewise, in the DVD-AR standards, assuring compatibility among reproduction apparatuses is one of the important concepts, and linear PCM is going to be adopted to achieve that object. Furthermore, to cope with the extended recording time of high-bit, high-sampling multi-channel audio data with high audio quality, the introduction of lossless compression PCM (packed PCM) has been examined.
In recent years, some EMD services have started, and demand for recording distributed music contents on a DVD-RAM disc, DVD-RW disc, and the like compatible to the DVD-AR standards is increasing.
However, music contents distributed by a plurality of EMD systems (Electronic Music. Distribution systems) adopt various audio compression schemes: MPEG-2.AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), ATRAC3 (Adaptive TRansform Acoustic Coding 3), MP3 (MPEG-1. Audio Layer 3), MS audio (WMA: Windows Media Audio), TwinVQ (Transform-Domain Weighted Interleave Vector Quantization), Q design, MP4, and the like.
It is possible to record these music contents distributed from the EMD systems on a DVD-RAM disc, DVD-RW disc, and the like as data files corresponding to individual EMD systems independently of the DVD-AR standards. However, the music contents stored in this way can be reproduced only by reproduction apparatuses compatible with the individual EMD systems (individual audio compression schemes), and cannot always be reproduced by all the reproduction apparatuses. Hence, reproduction compatibility cannot be assured.
It is not practical as a business undertaking to make each reproduction apparatus support all audio compression schemes since the apparatus load is so heavy (this leads to a high product cost). Furthermore, the number and kinds of compression schemes to be supported are design matters of individual reproduction apparatuses and/or recording apparatuses. In addition, once new audio compression schemes will appear in the future, compatibility is naturally lost.
A system according to an aspect of the present invention may use an information medium which can record compressed music data (music data compressed by AAC, ATRAC3, MP3, WMA, and the like) distributed from a music distribution system. Music data (music data of linear PCM or lossless compression PCM) transcoded based on the audio-compressed music data, and source compressed music data (music data compressed by AAC, ATRAC3, MP3, WMA, and the like) can be stored in a single file (an AR_EMD**.ARO file or a coupled file group). Also, information for applying usage rules having the same contents as contents usage rules (UR) appended to the music contents to the transcoded audio data can be stored.
The points of an embodiment-of the present invention can be summarized as follows. That is, audio-compressed music data distributed from the music distribution system may be xe2x80x9ctranscoded into data such as linear PCM data that can assure compatibilityxe2x80x9d. After that, the xe2x80x9ctranscoded dataxe2x80x9d may be combined to xe2x80x9coriginal dataxe2x80x9d containing copyright management information and/or copy control information distributed together with music data, and may be stored in the information medium as a xe2x80x9cmusic distribution compatible DVD coupled filexe2x80x9d.
Also, xe2x80x9clink informationxe2x80x9d to the xe2x80x9cmusic distribution compatible DVD coupled filexe2x80x9d may be recorded in program chain reproduction control information of the DVD audio recording (DVD-AR) standards.
Coupled contents management information that manages all data in the xe2x80x9ccoupled filexe2x80x9d may be read out, and the reproduction apparatus may select and reproduce one of the audio-compressed data or linear PCM (or lossless-compressed, packed PCM) data.
Furthermore, move/copy/deletion, and the like of the generated coupled file may be controlled on the basis of the distributed copyright management information and/or copy control information.